Chatting with a friend a few days ago, we talked about characters we created as kids.

In junior high and high school, my friends and I played a long-running campaign using the DC Heroes RPG rules, but our own setting called Radiant City. (I don’t think we’d heard of the Mister X comic and its similar setting at that point.) The many branches of that campaign have continued for decades, most recently a game I ran for friends here in Seattle just a couple years ago.

But even before that, we sat around making our own comics. My friend Brian did incredible Super Scott comics featuring his younger brother as the main character, with issues given to him as birthday and Christmas presents. I don’t know that I ever finished a whole issue of my own Super Seth (my sister wasn’t interested in being a superhero), but I made up a lot of characters who were part of my S.E.T.H. Comics Universe–the Super EnterTaining Heroes Comics Universe.

Some of the characters I remember: Super Seth, of course, and his nemesis Master Disguise (who wore a suite of white armor shaped quite similarly to that worn by Lex Luthor at the time, housing holo-projectors that could cloak him in various disguises.) Spy was my Nick Fury. Power Jousters was inspired by Team America, a childhood favorite comic, except they rode techno-monocycles and carried (naturally) lances armed with various gadgets. Worst Case Scenario was a lot like G.I. Joe, an elite military team with highly specialized members; I remember that among the scores of soldiers in their ranks was a combat cook. Chainsaw, Monk Punk, would make an appearance years later in the Sketch! rulebook as one of the first characters I drew for the game Brian and I designed.

Others I don’t remember, but I can infer a bit from the names. I can only assume that Jesus Force was an excuse to draw superheroes in church bulletins during boring Sunday services. Aaron of the Jungle was probably my school pal Aaron turned into a Tarzan clone. (Almost all of my friends had heroic or villainous identities eventually.) I can only make the same assumptions you would about what Crossbow and Broadsword might carry into battle. Captain Clutz looks like a complete and utter ripoff of the Don Martin MAD paperbacks I loved as a kid.

Reon, Mimbon, Quintain….those sound like I was just stringing random letters together to make a name. I have absolutely no idea who they might have been.

But I’m going to see if I can find out. I have file cabinets and boxes jammed full of stuff I created when I was a kid. Over the coming days, I’ll see if I can dig up (and scan and share) some answers.